Notes From The Kelp

LISTEN101.BLOGSPOT.COM

I like this CD very much. Ms. Shapiro handles a wide variety of instruments and idioms with style and expression. My favorite piece so far is Current Events, for string quintet (adding a viola to the traditional quartet). The piece is well-written for the instruments, expressive, and compelling. Ms. Shapiro's music stakes out so much musical territory that I am sure just about everyone will find somethng to like on the program.

by Steven Hicken

CHAMBER MUSIC AMERICA

As sheltered a life as I’ve led in the obscure shadows of the new- music world, I have never before met anyone with a bio like Alex Shapiro’s. One way of looking at it is that she used to be successful—and gave it up. That is, she worked in TV and film, and used to make a living off her music. She wrote the score to the Timothy Bottoms family film Horses and Champions, and she’s done projects for Sony Television, the Turner Broadcasting Network and the American Film Institute. She was a recording booth supervisor for the Star Trek TV series. Go to her slickly produced website, www.alexshapiro.org, and she’ll treat you to mp3s of her title music for the TV shows Most Wanted and Courthouse, and for the television documentary Behind the Scenes at People Magazine. (I would have thought I could write this column the rest of my life without ever making a reference to People Magazine.) And it sounds just like what you’d expect from TV: snappy, upbeat, gotchyer- attention tunes in technicolor production. Shapiro has tech skills and style informa- tion that most classical composers can only wonder at. She’s made jazz arrange- ments and written pop songs. And nine years ago, she walked away from that life to enter the cloistered, unremunerative world of the classical composer. She got tired, she says, of massaging producers’ egos, and she wanted complete creative control. It wasn’t an illogical move; in ear- lier years she’d studied at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music with Ursula Mamlok and John Corigliano. The ques- tion isn’t so much why she writes tons of chamber music now as how she got sucked into such a commercial detour in the first place. This unusual background has given Shapiro a lot of chops. We know what we mean when we attribute “chops” to a saxophonist or bass player, but the term turns awfully vague when applied to composers. What it means here is a close familiarity with a wide range of instru- ments, and the ability to do things with them you wouldn’t expect. For instance, I was quite taken with her piece Bioplasm from her new CD, Notes from the Kelp(on Innova, and more about kelp later). Listening to it while going about my business, I gathered that it was a large ensemble piece for exotic percussion, voices, winds, maybe even electronics. Imagine my surprise, upon looking at the score later, to find that it’s merely a flute quartet! It starts and ends with a calypso- like texture of booming alto and bass-flute key clicks (those were my imagined hand drums), and has sections in which the flutists hum and sing while playing. And since there are passages of growling, pitch-bending techniques in low register breaking into suave glissandos in both directions, it’s easy to see how I was so completely fooled. The other result of Shapiro’s unusual background is her complete lack of ideo- logical affiliation. Trained for infinite versatility, she can write any kind of music she wants, and she writes only what she wants. Nowhere does one run across a hint of minimalist influence, or serialist, or neoclassic, or postmodernist, or jazz, or for that matter TV or film music. It’s all just Alex Shapiro music, which is not, however, to say that it’s all closely unified by style. In contrast to the concept-based brilliance of Bioplasm, her Current Events for string quintet is deeply Romantic in an almost early-Schoenberg way, while her Piano Suite is thoughtfully atonal, imagistically dissonant in a way that brings Carl Ruggles to mind. Her website includes a disclaimer that “Stylistic diversity shouldn’t cause a composer to be taken less seriously,” and her music makes that argument well. All the same, she might well be warned that, in a music world in which many composers try to brand themselves through stylistic uniformity, listeners might find her diffi- cult to pin down. If there’s a unity here, it is more pro- grammatic than procedural. Shapiro lives on the ocean, on Washington State’s San Juan Island, loves it, and lets you know about it. Not for nothing is her CD titled Notes from the Kelp, and she seems to be practically dripping with seaweed in most of her photos. Current Events is a punning title about the sea, whose ultra- romantic Adagio is marked “Gazing at the still tide pools.” A movement of the Piano Suite bears the slogan, “Adrift at sea; a distant foghorn signals hope....” A climax is marked “The storm arrives.” The centerpoint of Shapiro’s personal kaleidoscope of styles is an inwardness that relates to a specifically aquatic form of nature-worship. Her music is at its best when it seems to be musing, reminiscing, meditating on a vast liquidity—as it almost always is. Appropriately, one of her most remarkable works is simply entitled Deep, written for contrabassoon and electronic soundtrack. There is nothing “bassoon-y” or even soloistic about it. The electronic timbres are so mystically sepulchral that they fold the contrabassoon into them- selves, and you really have to watch the score to be sure what the soloist is playing and what’s on the accompanying sound track. The piece broods with a slow wan- dering that seems formless, yet it does keep returning to motives archetypal enough as to pass by unmarked. And the sound pro- duction is so superb that you could pass the piece off as a really outside-the-box pop record, like a long-lost Brian Eno track. Surely this is the best solo contra- bassoon piece ever written—though I admit I make the claim never having heard another one, that I can recall. In lieu of an instantly recognizable idiom, Shapiro has tremendous technical skills, a deep connection to nature, and an engaging and articulate personality that has gotten her multifariously involved in the new-classical-music world that she had left behind for a while. She gets more performances than any one person could attend, and despite her nature wonder- land she’s socially inclined, a frequent presence on the Sequenza 21 website. She came roaring back from the commercial world we almost lost her to, and is making this new composer’s life as active and exciting as the one she left behind.

by Kyle Gann

ALL MUSIC GUIDE

West Coast composer Alex Shapiro writes that "Composing is a lot like making love. We're trying to please ourselves. We're hoping to please at least one other person. And we are, in fact, communicating. Passionately." You didn't hear this stuff from Milton Babbitt! But in fact there is a modernist component to Shapiro's music, wedded here to the nature imagery that living in California seems to inspire (all the music was composed in giddy Malibu). Her music is hard to classify -- it is in no way West Coast minimalism, and each piece has a distinct idea that may be worked out to quite a level of complexity. Something is happening almost all the time, and she rarely repeats material. On the other hand, it is tonally centered, it couldn't be called difficult, and a good deal of it is flat-out fun. Hear the opening Slipping, a work for violin, harpsichord, and "very mixed" percussion in which the harpsichord imitates a worldwide variety of stringed instruments in a rollicking, upbeat ride. Most of the music on the disc, including the punningly titled string quintet Current Events, vividly depicts natural forces; Deep, the sole electronic work on the album, teams a contrabassoon and electronics in a marvelously evocative depiction of the composer's experiences scuba diving in Belize. At the Abyss, for piano and percussion, embodies a program of responses to the threat of environmental catastrophe, with three movements entitled "Observe," "Reflect," and the resolute "Act." The most serious work on the album, the solo-piano For My Father, depicts the descent into dementia of the composer's father; here again Shapiro is both emotionally immediate and capable of sustaining a structural process over a long stretch. This ought to make a good introduction to the eclectic music of the present day, which embraces audiences as resolutely as the composers of the 1960s and 1970s rejected them, and it's enough to give one hope for the contemporary music scene.

by James Manheim

WE ARE ALL MOZART BLOG

I finally had the opportunity to sit down with [the] new CD from [one] of my favorite composers, Alex Shapiro. Alex's recording is acoustic and uses a wide acoustic palette.I like [her] work especially because [she is not] afflicted with the Masterpiece Syndrome, making points and expounding theories and showing evidence of every micro-moment of struggle. No, that doesn't mean the work is shallow, but rather that it has extricated itself from the romantic notion of composer and composition that swept all the way through the end of the Twentieth Century. Slipping is for violin, harpsichord and "very mixed percussion" -- and is just as mixed in style as it slips from one to the next. Using various harpsichord stops and techniques, Alex creates nine minutes of, well, fun. There's serious writing (and enormous technique and a great ear) involved, but more than anything, it's an entertainment. Perhaps my favorite piece for listening is Bioplasm, which I first heard on Kalvos & Damian several years ago. This piece explores flute techniques (including noises, voices and multiphonics) in a tightly wrought architecture that feels leisurely and attractive on its surface. That's what I like about Bioplasm, for quartet of flutes (bass, alto, soprano and piccolo): It doesn't make experimentation into hard work. Of course it's instantly reminiscent of Anne La Berge's 1996 fixiation for alto flute and recorded flutes -- but there the similarity ends. Where fixiation has a clear avant-garde backstory, Bioplasm approaches the music with (dare I say it) a film composer's ear. In other words, I am not conscious of the music so much as the sensation; in Anne's piece, I hear it as a listening demand. Both pieces belong in the repertoire of any flute ensemble. The string quintet Current Events is where Alex's architectural mastery comes into play. Last year I asked Alex to critique my string quartet L'Estampie du Chevalier, and her careful prose pointed up one thing strongly: that it was sometimes wasteful of notes (I paraphrase). Though I didn't change it (we couldn't be more different as composers, save for our commitment to our art), I understand what she means after hearing her string composition. In Current Events, she does not waste notes. All are purposeful and directed. It's an interesting anomaly, because where she repeats phrases or shapes, the weight of that repetition is felt in the substance of the composition. About this she writes poetically, that the music "ponders the ocean's tides as well as waves of a more internal, emotional nature." I agree; the thematic material is highly expressive (the end of the second movement is a model of expressive composition, and should be studied by any composer to discover how to achieve effect without pretense) and she has the string quartet in hand in the way George Rochberg used to -- large, lush harmonies paired with driving rhythms and contrapuntal clarity. No Ars Nova counterpoint here -- it's fragmentation and a driven response, unfettered by some imaginary audience awaiting the pabulum of the accessible. This piece has guts through and through. Alex has also created a marvelous program. After the emotionally relentless Current Events, she follows up with the deceptively simple For My Father. It's an expansive tone poem, with plenty of open space, quite the opposite of the string quintet. It's also pianistic, which is why Alex's work is notable. She handles each instrument as if it were her instrument. She's a flutist, right? No, a string player. No, a pianist? Which? I actually don't know, but my guess is none of the above. And then comes Bartók mode. At the Abyss (piano, marimba, vibraphone and percussion) is another work broken into short, complete, and economical movements. The first movement tumbles, and the second is, yes, Bartókian "Night Music". Perhaps it was Alex's sub-surface understanding of world events, as this was written when there were "many sad, threatening and violent events throughout the world" -- as with Bartók. And the effect of bowed metallophone (not sure whether it's vibe or marimba) is not to be missed. And for the non-Bartók part, listen to the last movement's riffs and jazz harmonies. Nice. Alex only teeters on the dangerous edge with Phos Hilaron, part of a larger suite. Out of context, it's hard to tell whether this movement succeeds. I shouldn't talk; it sounds a little like my work. But what I mean is that the work is so subdued in full-frontal music-ness. Oh yes, it's expressed beautifully. Just incompletely. Music for Two Big Instruments -- tuba and piano -- is brilliantly crafted. I love the tuba, and have written several pieces for it (a sonata, a quintet, a half-hour excursion with dance and electronics, and the WAAM piece for youth ensemble featuring tuba), recognizing that, despite its ungainly reputation, it is flexible and lustrous. It takes commitment to be other than clever, and Alex has it. She treats the tuba exactly like a French horn with an extended lower range, but takes advantage of its power without losing lyricism. Finally comes Deep. And it feels exactly like the crucial moment of a film when the hero escapes disaster and, out of the corner of the eyes, sees the villain, injured but alive, slip into an escaping vehicle. You know there's a sequel -- and in the case of Notes from the Kelp, I hope there is. Deep, for contrabassoon and electronics, uses the wide soundscape sensibility and orchestral panorama with a tonal orientation. This is no acousmatics, but it's also no "Hearts of Space" twaddle. Out of a haze in a reverberant field comes the contrabassoon and long, slow pitches rising from and fading into the haze. The pitches slowly stitch themselves into a melody, and recurring percussive sensations in the distance resolve into open intervals and even chords. I'm just reading Luigi Agostini's Creare Paesaggi Sonori, and realize that in all his talk of technique, he rarely touches on the depth of imagination required for a compelling experience.

by Dennis Bathory-Kitsz